The Three Castles was a first attempt at rallying for Shivs and me. I'd done the Rally of the Tests with Big Mike and had a good idea of what goes on, but for Shivs it was a total first.
This rally is much easier than some; there is no map plotting and the whole thing runs from a series of 'Road Books' providing times, distances and little diagrams called 'tulips' to guide you at each junction. Sounds straightforward ... and generally it is .... but not when you are running late and there is traffic and the tulips are very close together....
After the safety briefing on the Prelude day, we checked the calibration of the Retrotrip (a device rally cars have to measure distance very accurately) and then did a trial run.
The trip was running about 1% fast against a measured mile and we decided it was too risky to tamper with it.. which was just as well, as when we went back to the start we found they had taken the marker post down anyway...
The first day we went to Anglesey, had four driving tests and two regularities. Two of the tests were on the Anglesey circuit used in Fifth Gear. We had to run two laps at exactly the same speed, between an average of 27mph and 32mph. The regularities, where you must maintain a precise average speed over a fixed route on public roads, went well and we were luckier than some who were held up by local traffic.
At then end of Day One we were 28th and feeling quite pleased with ourselves....
The second day was in Snowdonia and included a hillclimb up a damn wall access road - with periodic stop / starts to ensure you don't go too fast on the hairpins. One instruction was annotated: Beware: Fresh Air Drop. There were two regularities, one of which was an hour and a half.. which is a very long time to concentrate on navigation, timing and trying to work out how much lateness to carry forward to the next section....
Despite a frustrating queue of 3 or 4 cars at some controls - some crews were miles out on timing and were running late - we went well and moved up to 20th overall at the end of the day.
A very early start (07.26) on Day Three took us down the Lleyn peninsula to Abersoch with two more regularites and a driving test. We were baulked by tourists at the end of the last, dropping 12 seconds, otherwise we would have 'cleaned' that one....
We finished mid afternoon and headed back to Llandundno promenade for the finish to find the place awash with tourists all taking a keen interest in our old motors. Standing around in the sun, gassing about cars with a glass of ice cold Stella in your hand... I was in heaven.
Our final finishing position was 16th with a score of 603 points, third in class and a surprise team win with a BMW 3.0 CSL and a Porsche 911E. Well pleased.
The rally was organised sensibly and, despite some early starts, there were coffee and tea stops, decent lunch venues (like the one above) and evening entertainment to tempt you to over indulge. We were allowed access to the promenade for parking during the day, which meant our cars were directly in front of the hotel and for the most part the marshalling was friendly and very helpful - a few were clearly overwhelmed by having to deal with over 100 cars arriving in relentless succession!
For those looking to start rallying, or to see if they might like it, this is a perfect event. Easy enough to cope with and not be totally baffled, but challenging for the more experienced crews.
See you next year.